JCI is an international
nonprofit organization that develops its members into “young active
citizens"- past members include Kofi Annan and Bill Clinton. It has
branches globally, with JCI Egypt being the latest
addition.

Adnane is a certified JCI trainer and member of JCI Rabat, and he designed
this course three years ago because “no guides were available
locally at the time.” This was the first time he’s delivered
the course in Egypt, as part of his new life as a social
entrepreneur, and it's his tenth time overall. The course, and
his consultancy service, is available for free to charities and
social enterprises, and for a fee to corporations.

The first day of the course was pure theory. You won’t be
surprised to read that starting a social enterprise is very much
like starting a regular one, the main difference being that the
focus is on social good instead of profit – although profit is good
for society too, of course.

Adnane explained the Lean
Canvas business model design method, an idea based upon Alex
Osterwalder's Business Model Canvas which is getting very popular
lately (read Kia Davis's review here and Abdullah AlShalabi's summary of a Startup Q8
presentation that featured it). The Lean Canvas technique asssesses
a business in terms of its partner network, key activities, key
resources, cost structure, offer, customer relationships, customer
segments, channels, and revenue streams.

Adnane also spoke about innovative thinking. He believes that
everyone is innovative, but frequently the only way to “ignite the
innovation” is to put people in a group, immerse them out of their
comfort zone, and “force” them to come up with new ideas, in this
case for social innovation.

The second day was practical, and comprised various exercises
that tested what the participants had learnt the day before. In one
fun exercise, people were split into teams of three and asked to
come up with three business models that used a cow in a
non-traditional way – i.e. not through involving dairy or meat
products – to solve social problems. “How can a cow save the
World?” Adnane asked with a grin.

The ideas the teams ultimately came up with weren’t very new but
were good enough, the best being using cow dung as a green energy
source, and using the cow itself as a tourist attraction by
painting it or making it predict football scores! Adnane also gave
us some global examples of real-life innovative cow use, the best
two being the use of cows as advertising billboards, or as rentable
pets!

In the last exercise, participants were given an hour to come up
with “a project from A to A; a business model that fixes a local
social problem.”

When it came time to present the projects at the end, the teams
did their best to be negative about each other, even getting into
arguments about why the other’s ideas would fail. Adnane was
visibly disappointed; he’s not accustomed to the modern Egyptian
lack of debating skills and intolerance of difference. “If we can’t
organize our debate or conversations, then we won’t be able to
organize a social enterprise,” he said loudly.

This modern Egyptian malaise is at the heart of most problems
here, and it’s the reason we need more enterprise,
entrepreneurship, innovative thinking, and the ability to simply
listen to someone’s point of view. To be fair, with more and
more events like this, Egypt is already changing for the
better.

Omar Aysha is an AUC graduate, then UK video game developer, turned Euro business IT consultant then serial entrepreneur, turned writer. He coaches startups, is launching a startup, and has a podcast show.Â Reach him at omar.aysha@wamda.com or @StartupEgypt.